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Lookout: Bolstering a Phone’s Defenses Against Breaches

October 14, 2013

Lookout recently announced a new $55 million financing that will enable the company to expand its “Lookout for Business” with corporate customers. The following are excerpts from the October 14, 2013 New York Times article, “Bolstering a Phone’s Defenses Against Breaches.” The article profiles Lookout and its differentiated approach to mobile security.

Lookout [has been] busy tracking the cybercriminals and aggressive advertisers that target the 45 million people around the globe who have downloaded the company’s free mobile security app. That is Step 1 to a more lucrative goal: protecting the data of big, corporate customers that are allowing employees to use their own mobile devices on corporate networks.

The so-called bring your own device, or B.Y.O.D., trend can lead to trouble. Almost half of companies that allow personally owned devices to connect to the corporate network have experienced a data breach, either because of unwitting mistakes by employees or intentional wrongdoing.

Most B.Y.O.D. antidotes are geared toward mobile data management. Lookout [approaches] the problem from a different direction. It used a consumer app to increase the number of devices it can monitor and to gain better brand visibility.

Nearly half of employees at companies in the Fortune 1000 [already] run Lookout. Last month, the company announced Lookout for Business, which is meant to help businesses manage and secure employees’ mobile devices, whether or not they are company-issued. The app will block malware, spyware and adware on those devices and give corporations, and its own customers, a clearer window into a new breed of mobile threats.